Hasbro cuts Goldner pay 47% as toymaker sees 45% profit gain

PAWTUCKET – Responding to shareholder concerns over the level of executive compensation, Hasbro Inc. made changes to the pay package of President and CEO Brian Goldner, with the result that his total compensation for 2014 fell 46.7 percent to $14.6 million in 2014, according to the company’s proxy statement filed Monday.
The company re-wrote Golder’s employment contract, scheduled to run through 2017, to add return on invested capital as a metric for granting share awards, trimmed a performance multiplier from a different set of share awards and added new vesting components to other stock awards.

Goldner, who has run the Pawtucket-based toy and game manufacturing company since 2008, saw his overall compensation decrease from $27.4 million in 2013. The drop comes largely as a result of a reduction in stock awards, as Goldner received $7.7 million last year compared with $21.6 million a year earlier.
His base salary increased 4.2 percent to $1.3 million, and he received $2.8 million in option awards and $2.3 million in a non-equity incentive plan.
At the end of the year, Goldner held $40.3 million in outstanding non-vested equity awards. In addition, he realized a gain of $8.9 million when he exercised his option to purchase 400,000 shares of the company.
In the last year, the board of directors reached out to shareholders holding about 63 percent of total shares outstanding – including the top 25 shareholders – to try to understand and identify concerns pertaining to executive compensation.
“We continue to find these conversations with our shareholders extremely valuable to inform our board’s and management’s actions and to determine where investors may have questions or different viewpoints,” outgoing Board Chairman Alfred J. Verrecchia wrote in a letter to shareholders.
Leading concerns included overall magnitude of pay, “use of stock price hurdles for the one-time restricted stock unit grant that could be achieved at a single point” and the structure of the total shareholder return multiplier on Goldner’s contingent performance share grants, according to the filing.
The company turned in a solid performance in 2014, posting net income of $415.9 million, or $3.20 per diluted share, representing a 45.3 percent increase from $286.2 million – or $2.17 per diluted share – recorded a year earlier.
In February, the board approved a 7 percent increase in the quarterly dividend and an additional $500 million authorization for future share repurchases, according to the company.
Other executives whose total compensation was included in the proxy statement included:

  • Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Wiebe Tinga, $2.5 million (no compensation was given for 2013)
  • Executive Vice President Chief Global Operations and Business Development Officer Duncan Billings, $2.2 million (and increase of 1.9 percent over 2013)
  • Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Deborah Thomas, $2.2 million (+3.4 percent)
  • President, Hasbro Brands John Frascotti, $2.1 million (-2.6 percent)

Hasbro announced its annual meeting of shareholders, which will be held at 11 a.m. on May 21 in its corporate headquarters at 1027 Newport Avenue, Pawtucket.
The meeting will include the election of eleven directors and an advisory vote on the compensation of executive officers.

No posts to display